Cydia

As we draw ever closer to the April 3 launch date, iPad prediction mania is refusing to die. The Oscar night commercial spawned a surprising number of rumors and suppositions for being a simple 30-second spot. Apple's iBooks are cheaper than Kindle e-books! Or… more expensive. Or both! And a guy saw a camera, or something!

Let's take a look at the iBookstore for starters. Several bestsellers made an appearance, from the late Teddy Kennedy’s True Compass: A Memoir to the thrilling Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Journey to Change the World…One Child at a Time by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin. The first book was shown at $14.99 US on the iBookstore, which is less than the $19.25 the same title costs on Amazon for Kindle digital download, while the second has a $7.99 iBookstore price but goes for $7.19 on Amazon. So, a bit of a wash, with prices varying from about $8 to $15 US.

Another somewhat-interesting, somewhat-amusing tidbit was the persistence of the "My Documents" button in the iPad version of Pages. Some thought that the appearance of the archaic Windows name on Apple's sleek 21st Century tablet was just a placeholder, to be replaced with "iDocs," or at least "My Pages." But, if this high-profile commercial is any indication, it does appear that the name which was dropped from Windows 7 is being reborn as an iPad feature.

Sometimes, it's the details that count. One sharp-eyed TUAW commenter spotted the characteristic Times blackletter capital T logo at the bottom of the iBooks app at the end of the ad. If you squint really hard, it looks like this would bring up a list of New York Times best sellers. And speaking of squinting: take a look at the zoomed capture from 0:03 of the ad: